Internships/ProjectIdeas/memhotplug test

Memory hotplug test

Summary: Create memory hotplug testing infrastructure.

Several QEMU targets support memory hotplug feature, which allows to (un)provision extra memory without requiring virtual machine reboot or restart for changes to take the effect. QEMU however lacks regression tests for the feature. Goal of the project is refactor QEMU's "-m" option legacy parsing into machine object properties, which should provide ability to inspect memory settings using QMP interface and implement test cases on top of that.

Project is to be split in to following parts:

• Refactor "-m mem,slots,maxmem" into MachineClass properties and replace related global variables where they are still used with properties. Make "set_memory_options()" use new properties leaving only CLI parsing there. Goal is to make "set_memory_options()" function a thin wrapper that takes care of CLI parsing and makes CLI option '-m' an alias to new -machine mem/mem-slots/maxmem options.
• Create a set of basic tests for 'make check' to verify that -m/-machine CLI parsing works as expected and based on that a set memory hot-add tests using QMP introspection to verify the expected behaviour.
• If time allows create guest-host memory hotplug ABI tests for x86/sPAPR/s390x targets.

Links:

• $(QEMU sources)/docs/memory-hotplug.txt

Details:

• Skill level: intermediate
• Language: C
• Mentor: Igor Mammedov <imammedo@redhat.com> ("imammedo" on IRC), David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com> ("dhildenb" on IRC)